Odd thoughts clutter the mind when you are faced with a wall of muddy dirt pressed up against your car's window, "What, specifically, just happened?", "Can the worms see in?", "Ew, this is gonna be a mess.", "Man, the locals are going to laugh their rears off when they tow us out." and, my personal favorite, "Are there any locals nearby who can tow us out?". Yes, this is the denouement of our Grand Tour of New Zealand - in a ditch by the side of the road in the middle of rainy nowhere. This couldn't possibly have happened. I mean, we are ON LAND. Nothing bad happens ON LAND. We are careful people. I mean, at sea we are terribly alert to the point of paranoia. Ahhhh, I see, we were victims of the old "land can't hurt you" syndrome. Sadly, it is something that can happen to cruisers. The symptoms are an inability to think through land-based consequences, a lack of awareness of your surroundings, a warm fuzzy feeling of safety when not at sea, and an unnatural worship of flushing toilets and hot running water.   Yes, yes, I see it now. As I review the last six weeks of puddling about New Zealand's South Island the signs are all too clear. I think it started with all those doe-eyed seals and sea lions lazing about the beaches. Little did we know that they harbor a terrible secret. They can move like the wind. Er, alright a galumphing, lumbering wind, but still - oooo- wind-like. Did we pay attention? No. Richard innocently took picture after picture, never knowing he was in danger of death by blubber. Well, we did get a clue when one particularly large specimen started to chase Richard who bravely tripped backwards over a log. But, didn't the critters read the "Don't get within 10 meters!" signs? If you want REAL danger, then there are the little blue penguins. These diminutive penguins look like children's stuffed toys. They hop their tiny fuzzy selves up onto rocks and sit there, grumpily molting.They are pocket penguins really. Get one for the whole family, they come with a matching blue, fuzzy purse! I bet the little evil-doers would have cuddled us to death in a flash. Next in the list of New Zealand's dangers are the weka. Weka are brown flightless birds that look a tad like a chicken (I wonder if they taste like one too?). They wander about looking for food, bumbling in the brush like toddlers. One particularly vicious specimen came right up to our hotel's sliding glass door, pecking insistently. The manager claimed all they wanted was a few tourist breadcrumbs. But, now that I know the real dangers lurking behind every sweet-smelling blooming bush, I know the truth. It was a zombie weka mindlessly bouncing against the door trying to get at the human flesh inside. Don't even get me started on the kea. These are deceptively friendly alpine parrots. They hop about pine trees or rocks in a most charming manner. They bounce around with cheeky little clownlike personalities. The kea are attracted to shiny and novel objects. You know, a bit like high-maintenance women in a jewelry store. Apparently kea have so much food given to them from human sources that they have developed actual leisure time.  Just what you want, an highly intelligent, curious, extremely sharp-billed 5-year-old with leisure time. A kea website claims that "Juvenile male birds seem to make up the majority of these loitering groups.", typical. These hopping hooligans attack hiking boots, any rubber object on a car, destroy ski bindings, pull off bits from waiting emergency planes (they cover the planes in netting because of this), break sunglasses and peck at nice shiny eyeballs. I myself saw a grizzly scene involving two kea and a Subway sandwich wrapper tug of war. The nightmares still trouble me so. New Zealand is a land without poisonous snakes or spiders. We naively assumed we would be safe from the creepy, crawly world. We did not count on New Zealand's real dirty, little secret - sandflies. These are biting, bloodsucking, itch inducing insects straight from the bowels of hell. Even the thick-skinned seals are reduced to wild flipper flapping when the flies are about. Insect repellent? Hey! We are ON LAND! Why would we bring insect repellent with us? Tsk. I suppose it should have been clear that we were not safe even in the car after the Great Sheep Flood of 2006. There we were, toodling down the road, the forest around us filled with bird calls and the sound of water swirling over waterfalls. All of a sudden, a flash of curly white. A sheep. Not just a sheep, many sheep. Many , many, many sheep and a sheep-dog bounding over their wooly backs, and they were coming straight for us! In no time our car was engulfed in a sea of wet, muddy, fuzzy cream colored critters. Some even bounded over the hood of our car. I think they were eyeing our throats.  In no time it was over. We had been saved by the valiant effort of the dogs, snapping at the sheep to keep them in line. The flood headed down the road to its next victims. Obviously, land is far too dangerous. Its time to head to sea. Until later Jen